Gravy
Episodes
Hostesses of the Movement
22 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The hostesses of the Civil Rights Movement: They were school teachers, church ladies, and club women. Their subtle contributions played a vital role i...
Dispatch from Duplin County
08 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
By the end of the twentieth century, hog farming had replaced tobacco as the backbone of eastern North Carolina's economy. Today, the hog industry is ...
Home with the Armadillo: The Austin Sound, with a Side of Nachos
25 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Austin, Texas, calls itself the Live Music Capital of the World. Back in the 1970s, country music mixed with rock-and-roll to create the "Austin sound...
Hidden in Plain Sight: Las Pulgas of New Orleans
11 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When people think of New Orleans food, jambalayas, gumbos, and beignets usually come to mind. But with the arrival of thousands of Central American an...
Baptism by Biryani
28 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
If you want to see the American future, visit Greater Houston, the nation's most diverse major metropolitan area and home to the South's biggest city....
A Taste of Place: Whiskey as Food
14 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When most people sit down to enjoy a pour of whiskey, they aren't thinking about where the grain that it is made with comes from, nor do they think mu...
A Most Civil Union: from Reconstruction to Restaurateur
30 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Brunswick, Georgia's The Farmer & The Larder restaurant is forward-facing with its menu, while paying homage to an agricultural legacy that reaches ...
Stories from the Hem of my Mother's Apron
16 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
For Hannah Drake, it all started with a trip to Dakar, Senegal. The author, poet, mother, and native Kentuckian was transformed by the communal exper...
Of Hunger and Humanity: Resilience on the Texas Coast
02 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When Hurricane Harvey unleashed 30 trillion gallons of rain on Texas last summer, thousands of evacuees and first responders needed to be fed. Restaur...
The Wise Family at Work: A Sound Portrait
19 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Historically, African Americans played a central role in the nation’s agriculture system, and, through their labor and know-how on farms and plantat...
Booze Legends
05 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Striking up a conversation with a stranger in a bar is accepted, even expected. And storytelling is a big part of that engagement. But when it comes ...
Kimchi and Cornbread
21 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When you sit down for a meat and three in Montgomery, Alabama, say at the Davis Café, you choose from the menu and you get one plate all for you, but...
Shad Stories: The Ebb and Flow of the Founding Fish
07 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The American shad were once as plentiful in the water along the east coast as the buffalo were in the west. But after decades of overfishing and pollu...
Pie by Another Name: The Burekas of Or Ve Shalom
24 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Every Tuesday a group of women gets together at Or Ve Shalom Synagogue in Atlanta to bake hundreds of savory hand-held pies. They're called burekas, ...
Hostesses of the Movement
10 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This week’s Gravy podcast looks at hostesses of the Civil Rights Movement. They were school teachers, church ladies and club women who were not dire...
The Mala Project: Chinese Flavors, Tennessee Family
27 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when a white family in the American South adopts an 11-year-old Chinese girl who’s never eaten a meal other than Chinese in her entire ...
Bluegrass Tacos
13 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the northwestern part of Lexington, Kentucky, just inside the city’s loop road, there is a little bit of Mexico. In all directions, there are sig...
Separation of Church and Coffee
29 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How many of us would be lost without our regular coffeeshop? In the age of wifi and telecommuting, cafes have become more than purveyors of lattes and...
Going Whole Hog in Israel
15 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When you think about Israeli cuisine there are a few things that may come to mind; hummus or shawarma, shakshuka and baba ganoush. What probably doesn...
How A Texas Vine Saved European Wine
31 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Thanks to Texan viticulturist Thomas Volney Munson, you should probably think of Texas when you think of that French wine you're drinking. During an a...
Farmer's Blues
18 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine you’re a young person wanting to be a farmer. If you don’t inherit land from your family, the challenges of finding and affording farmland...
Halal Memphis
04 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Chicken shawarma might not be the first food that comes to mind when you think of Memphis. This episode of Gravy takes us inside Ali Baba Mediterranea...
Booze Legends
19 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Striking up a conversation with a stranger in a bar is accepted, even expected. And storytelling is a big part of that engagement. But when it comes ...
Corned Beef Sandwiches in the Delta
06 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the season for communal meals, like Easter dinners and Passover Seders. In the Mississippi Delta town of Greenville, members of the Hebrew Unio...
The Chili Powder Cheat: A Tex-Mex Story
22 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Texas: the land of BBQ, breakfast tacos…and of course Tex-Mex. But what if we told you Tex-Mex wasn’t created by a Texan or Mexican, but a Ger...
Southern Food Gets Christopher Columbus-ed
09 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
So much of our national culture—food, music, dance—has come from the South. Where would American dance be without Jane Brown? Where would America...
Korean BBQ in Coolsville: A Memphis Report
23 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when Korean barbecue goes from suburban strip malls to restaurant rows in cities like Atlanta, New Orleans, and Memphis? On the latest Gr...
Reclaiming Native Ground
09 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
For centuries, the bayous and lowlands of coastal Louisiana have fed the Point-au-Chien Indian Tribe. From cattle to crabs, oranges to okra, the fert...
Ironies and Onion Rings: The Layered Story of the Vidalia Onion
26 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
If you know and love the Vidalia onion—an onion sweet enough, its fans say, to eat like an apple—you likely also know it as a product of Georgia, ...
Hungry in the Mississippi Delta
12 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
While civil rights activists worked in Mississippi in 1964, they encountered a poverty they could never have imagined. People were hungry, starving ...
ENCORE: The Emotional Life of Eating
29 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Many of the stories we hear and tell about food are positive—food’s power to nourish, to comfort, to bring people together. But it also has the po...
A Tale of Two Krauts
15 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Reynolds takes us into the kitchens of Louise Frazier and Sandor Katz to learn how fermenting vegetables has helped them both carry on through...
The Southern Story of Coca Cola (Gravy Ep. 51)
01 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
You might think of Coca Cola as an iconic American brand… and you’d be right. But: it was born in the South. How did Coke’s Atlanta birthplace s...
Beyond the Golden Leaf (Gravy Ep. 50)
17 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
For generations, farmers in western North Carolina have relied on tobacco as a core crop, their lifeblood. It was more than just income, though: tobac...
Maize Migrations (Gravy Ep. 49)
03 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Corn is a ubiquitous part of Southern food—from bread to whiskey. But how did it get to be that way? In this episode of Gravy, we go on a hunt for t...
Transplanted Traditions: From Southeast Asia to North Carolina (Gravy Ep. 48)
20 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Chapel Hill, there’s a farm that’s much more than just a spot to grow food: it’s a gathering place for refugees, including a group of Karen t...
What Is White Trash Cooking? (Gravy ep. 47)
06 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In 1986, Ernest Matthew Mickler of Palm Valley, Florida, published White Trash Cooking. It was a loving ode to his people—rural, white, working-clas...
Repast (Gravy Ep. 46)
22 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
One spring day in 1965, a waiter in Greenwood, Mississippi gave an interview for an NBC television documentary. What he said has made him an unlikely ...
Dancing the Shrimp Dry: How Chinese Immigrants Drove Louisiana Seafood (Gravy Ep. 45)
08 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine this: deep in the Louisiana wetlands, a wooden platform the size of three football fields, covered in shrimp, drying in the sun… which are b...
The Leftovers In A Coal Miner's Lunchbox (Gravy Ep. 44)
25 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, Ronnie Johnson woke up in the late afternoon, and fixed a lunch to bring with him 2,000 feet underground, as he worked all night in a coa...
An Apple Quest (Gravy Ep. 43)
11 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
You’ve heard of explorers discovering new lands, but new… fruits? Fruit exploring has a long and abundant history, including in the American South...
Schnitzel and the Saturn V (Gravy Ep. 42)
28 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How did Huntsville, Alabama become home to a whole host of German restaurants? It has more to do with rocket science, than with Southerners’ love of...
ENCORE: Dinner at the Patel Motel (Gravy Ep. 33)
14 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
We stay at them around the South and across the United States: Day’s Inn. Best Western. Quality Inn. But there is a food world behind the scenes at ...
Fish Camps: Fried Seafood and Family in a North Carolina Mill Town
30 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
For years in Gaston County, North Carolina, just west of Charlotte, there was a local tradition on Friday or Saturday night: Get the whole family in t...
A Seafood Phenomenon: the Wonder of Alabama Jubilees (Gravy Ep. 40)
16 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine: crabs, fish, eels—a whole team of sea creatures—rushing towards the shore, and then sitting there, as if waiting to be caught. This isn’...
The Middle East in Music City (Gravy Ep. 39)
02 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The pride of Nashville: honky tonks and… Halal lamb? The area of the city known as Little Kurdistan contains a whole culinary universe that many peo...
What’s Growing in Mossville? (Gravy Ep. 38)
19 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The residents of Mossville, Louisiana have long prized self-sufficiency. Founded by freed slaves in the 1700s, Mossville was a place where everyone gr...
Halo Halo: Growing up “Mix Mix,” Filipino in the American South (Gravy Ep. 37)
05 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
When Alexis Diao’s father arrived in Tallahassee, Florida, he couldn’t even find coconut milk—let alone many other ingredients to make the Filip...
The New Old Country Store (Gravy Ep. 36)
21 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Every week, Cracker Barrel provides 4 million Americans with a studied version of down-home Southern food and hospitality. The dumplins and the chicke...
Wanting the Bourbon You Can’t Have (Gravy Ep. 35)
07 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to a certain kind of bourbon, it doesn’t matter who you are or how much money you have—you can’t get it unless you’re exceptiona...
Jell-O Makes the Modern (Mountain) Woman (Gravy Ep. 34)
24 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Jell-O could seem like a trivial food. It’s brightly colored-- vibrantly orange, electric green or unsettlingly blue—nutritionally void, and, hey,...
Dinner at the Patel Motel (Gravy Ep. 33)
09 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
We stay at them around the South and across the United States: Day’s Inn. Best Western. Quality Inn. But there is a food world behind the scenes at ...
Mexican-ish: How Arkansas Came to Love Cheese Dip (Gravy Ep. 32)
25 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
There’s a dish you’ll find at every kind of restaurant in Little Rock, from the pizza places to the burger joints: cheese dip. How did it become s...
A Trailer, a Temple, a Feast: Making Laos in North Carolina (Gravy Ep. 31)
11 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Sticky rice. It may not be the first dish you expect to be served in a double-wide trailer in the mountain South, but in Morganton, North Carolina, yo...
The Pull of Pollo: How the Chicken Industry Transformed One Arkansas Town (Gravy Ep. 30)
28 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
When you think of Southern food, especially if you're not from the South, fried chicken might be the first dish that comes to mind. Chicken is a South...
Hip Hop to Bibimbap: the Atlanta of Christiane Lauterbach (Gravy Ep. 11)
14 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What kind of view of a city can you have through its restaurants? Or—more specifically—through its strip mall restaurants? Christiane Lauterbach’...
Fighting for the Promised Land: A Story of Farming and Racism (Gravy Ep. 29)
31 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Shirley Sherrod’s introduction to the intermingling of agriculture and racism came when she was 17 years old, with an incident that changed the cour...
Southern Fried Baked Alaska (Gravy Ep. 28)
17 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What do the restaurants of your childhood say about the place you grew up? In Jack Hitt’s case, the Oysters Mornay and Escargots Bourguignonne of hi...
Delta Jewels (Gravy Ep. 27)
03 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
When Alysia Burton Steele moved to Mississippi, she found herself drawn to the Delta. Something about it reminded her of her grandmother, who’d grow...
South by South of the Border Soul Food (Gravy Ep. 26)
19 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Black-eyed peas and collards. Fried chicken and peach cobbler. Customers at Delicious Southern Cuisine in Los Angeles come for these soul food staples...
The Cajun Reconnection (Gravy Ep. 25)
05 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
How is a region of the far north—Canada—intimately connected to a region 2,000 miles away in the Deep South? It’s a story that begins 250 years ...
The Mason Jar Pickle (Gravy Ep. 24)
22 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
They’re everywhere: in your fancy cocktail bar and your down home country restaurant. In the hands of farmer’s market shoppers and 7-Eleven Slurpe...
Combat Ready Kitchen (Gravy Ep. 23)
08 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
One of the more important places for the modern Southern (and American) diet may be... an obscure army base in Natick, Massachusetts. The Combat Feedi...
A Salt Story: West Virginia Siblings Mine the Past to Build a Future (Gravy Ep. 22)
24 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
While West Virginia may be known for resources like coal, the country once turned to this mountain state for a culinary staple: salt. Salt production ...
Coming Out Meatless (Gravy Ep. 21)
10 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What does *not* eating meat say about you? In one young biracial man’s family, his dietary change was construed as white, elite, even feminine. In t...
Red Beans, Red Wine, & Rebuilds: a Katrina Anniversary Special (Gravy Ep. 20)
27 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Ten years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, how does the city’s food reveal how the place has changed? This hour-long special episode ...
Ice Cream, Coffee, and Community in Alabama: A Gravy Road Trip (Gravy Ep. 19)
13 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The Shoals is a community in Northwest Alabama made up of four towns: Muscle Shoals, Florence, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia. Tucked in the foothills of th...
Bill Smith Turns Up the Volume (Gravy Ep. 9)
30 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
How does a chef’s taste in things other than food wind up influencing what’s on the plate? For example, if they like rocking out to, say, the Butt...
Holding Onto the Bayou (Gravy Ep. 18)
16 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Five years ago this week, the BP oil spill ended. On July 15, 2010, the well that had been spilling millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico...
A Charleston Feast for Reconciliation (Gravy Ep. 17)
02 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Charleston, South Carolina has become the center of discussions about race and violence in America these past few weeks. The massacre of nine African ...
Fried Chicken: A Complicated Comfort Food (Gravy Ep. 16)
18 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
It’s easy to love fried chicken. The light crunch of a crisped wing or leg, followed by the moist meat of the interior; it’s understandably belove...
A City Built on Barbecue (Gravy Ep. 15)
04 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Lexington, North Carolina calls itself the “Barbecue Capital of the World.” (In fact, the state legislature got a little more specific about it, d...
The Last Jews of Natchez (Gravy Ep. 14)
21 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
People are often surprised when Robin Amer tells them her family is from the South. That’s because her family is Jewish, and a lot of people don’t...
A Migration Reversed (Gravy Ep. 13)
07 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Once you’ve left home in search of a better life, what might make you return? During the Great Migration, six million African Americans left the Sou...
Tamales for the Derby (Gravy Ep. 12)
23 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Most of us know the Kentucky Derby from the front side of the track: the fancy Derby hats, the mint juleps, the thrill of the race. But there’s a wh...
Hip Hop to Bibimbap: the Atlanta of Christiane Lauterbach (Gravy Ep. 11)
09 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What kind of view of a city can you have through its restaurants? Or—more specifically—through its strip mall restaurants? Christiane Lauterbach’...
Our Bourbon Street or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Hand Grenade (Gravy Ep. 10)
26 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
You probably have a mental image of Bourbon Street: drunken revelers, neon signs, debauchery of many kinds. Well, it once was just a residential stree...
Bill Smith Turns Up the Volume (Gravy Ep. 9)
12 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
How does a chef’s taste in things other than food wind up influencing what’s on the plate? For example, if they like rocking out to, say, the Butt...
The Pie Formerly Known as Derby (Gravy Ep. 8)
26 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In and around Louisville, lots of things are named after the Kentucky Derby. The famous horse race, held at Churchill Downs every first weekend in May...
Brothers, Soldiers, Farmers (Gravy Ep. 7)
12 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
There are more military veterans in the South than any other part of the United States. This region has also been losing farmers at an astonishing rat...
The Jemima Code (Gravy Ep. 6)
29 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Toni Tipton Martin was just starting out as a reporter back in the 1980’s, when she noticed something that struck her as odd about the cookbook sect...
Sweet, Sour, Bitter, Salty: The Emotional Life of Eating (Gravy Ep. 5)
15 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Many of the stories we hear and tell about food are positive—food’s power to nourish, to comfort, to bring people together. But it also has the po...
Live at Fred's Lounge (Gravy Ep. 4)
01 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Fred’s Lounge in Mamou, Louisiana, is a dancing and drinking destination… on Saturday mornings only. That’s the only time it’s open. For years...
The Fight for Water and Oysters (Gravy Ep. 3)
18 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Atlanta can seem like it’s a very long way from the oystering communities in Florida’s Panhandle. There are, in fact, hundreds of miles between th...
Separation of Church and Coffee (Gravy Ep. 2)
04 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In cities and towns across the South, an increasing number of the folks offering up latte art and high-end pourover brewing are devout Christians. Is ...
Adaptation, Survival, Gratitude: a Lumbee Thanksgiving Story (Gravy Ep. 1)
20 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
For Thanksgiving, a Native American story… but not the one you’re imagining. No Pilgrims here. For the Lumbee Indians in North Carolina, the holi...
Welcome to Gravy
17 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
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